Ache - History and Cultural Relations

The Ache were first mentioned by Jesuit historians who described them in
derogatory terms as living just like animals. Undoubtedly, the Ache
provided a striking contrast to the elegant and
"civilized" Guaraní horticulturist peoples who
inhabited the region of the Paraná and Paraguay rivers at the
time of the Conquest. The Ache lived in tiny bands that subsisted
entirely off wild plants and animals. They had no leaders, no permanent
settlements, and very simple tools and ornaments. Lozano (1873-1874) was
the first to refer to them directly by name: "Only slightly less
barbaric (than the caaiguas), is the guachagui nation, although easier
to tame.... They go completely naked, men and women, except that they
cover their backs with a piece of woven material to guard against
thorns.... And seeing or sensing strangers in their country they flee
quickly without allowing one to speak with them, because they believe
either that they are going to be killed, or they are being sought in
order to steal their women, like they do to each other...."

The Ache were pursued relentlessly, by missionaries, enemy Indians, and
slave traders until the second half of the twentieth century. For this
reason, relations between them and all outsiders were overtly hostile,
and very little was known about them until quite recently. In 1908 a
German immigrant to Paraguay, Federico Maintzhusen, managed to make
peaceful contact with a small band and published some information about
them. Later, when Maintzhusen returned to Germany, this band disappeared
or was assimilated into the Paraguayan population. In 1959 half of the
Ypety band walked out of the forest to live with Jesús Pereira, a
man who had treated one of them well when he was working as a captive
slave. A short while later the other half of this band joined their kin
at Pereira's farm. Pereira used this group to initiate contact
with the nearby Yvytyruzu Ache between 1962 and 1963, and from these two
bands came the first good ethnographic information on the Ache. More
than half these Ache died from virgin-soil epidemics (epidemics that
strike regions where people have no immunity to exotic epidemic
diseases) within a few years of peaceful contact.

In 1968 Pereira moved his Ache reservation into the home range of the
Northern Ache in order to contact and subdue them. The first band of
Northern Ache was finally contacted and brought to the reservation in
1970. By 1978 all of the Northern Ache had either been convinced to join
the Ache reservation, or had died from virgin-soil epidemics that swept
the Northern group after first peaceful contact. About one-half of the
population died from these epidemics. Finally, missionaries from the
United States made peaceful contact with the Ñacunday Ache in
1976, and no more independent forest-living bands remained. The four
Ache groups now live in four reservation-type settlements where they
have learned agricultural practices and occasionally participate in wage
labor. Many Ache also continue to return to the forest for several days
or weeks at a time to hunt and gather as they did before contact.